Workaround for slow timeline switching

On a half hour program I am editing, I switch from main timeline to "stringouts" of b-roll and other contents on other timelines. I copy/paste from those to main timeline however, it takes about 25 seconds to switch back to the main timeline. VERY slow editing and a huge pain.

One workaround I am using now seems to solve this problem somewhat. I bring the timeline with the stringout into the preview window. Find the in/out point I want and lay that edit to the Master timeline. I then decompose in place and I have the clips on my timeline as if I had pasted them individually. No 25 second wait to switch back to main timeline.

A bit tedious but much better than the constant 25 second switch timeline problem.

There's an option in the Timeline drop-down menu for automatically decomposing edits into the timeline. The audio thing sounds like user error. Are you sure you have active destination tracks?

That delay isn't normal. I can switch between stacked timelines in less than a second, even for two hour timelines.

That delay isn't normal. I can switch between stacked timelines in less than a second, even for two hour timelines.

Your experience is so far inexplicable. And, as far as I know, unique.

I just did a fresh install of 16.2.055 over the top of my previous Resolve install. The switch time for the master timeline has decreased from 24 seconds to 18. 25% increase that is repeatable so far.

Variation in that range is common. Unlikely it will be sustained.

as far as I know, unique.

Odd. It's been pretty quick ever since Stacked Timelines were introduced.

On both machines. (And neither is by any measure a 'beast'.)

Lots of RAM and a really fast system will speed this up.

You can also go to Preferences and choose Preferences -> User -> Project Save and Load -> Load all Timelines, and load all the timelines into RAM at the same time. When you do this, switching inbetween timelines should be almost instantaneous. (P. 129 of the 16.2 manual.)

Lots of RAM and a really fast system will speed this up.

You can also go to Preferences and choose Preferences -> User -> Project Save and Load -> Load all Timelines, and load all the timelines into RAM at the same time. When you do this, switching inbetween timelines should be almost instantaneous. (P. 129 of the 16.2 manual.)

So how does system rate? I checked it on the BRAW speed test and got only green check marks. Are you suggesting I double the RAM from 64 to 128? I realize the speed test is just for BRAW but thought it is helpful for assessing overall PC performance.

So how does system rate? I checked it on the BRAW speed test and got only green check marks. Are you suggesting I double the RAM from 64 to 128?

We're very close to buying a new system, and I'm specifying 256GB of RAM "just because." I don't pretend it'll have much of an effect on Resolve, but hey... it couldn't hoit.

Marc you are running 128 currently? Weird, but when I check the preference of loading timelines as you suggested, it makes zero difference on the switching to my Master timeline. It still takes 22 seconds.

I have the same problem. I've already posted the same tread. The advices were just the same and none of them help. Load all timelines didn't change anything. I got slower machine the yours but my switching take less time.
And we are not alone. Lots of users report the same. And some others says that they haven't such a problem.

Appreciate the info. Do you have a link to your thread also?

You've already been in this treads)
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=110709

Hmmm, its late into the evening as I toil away staring at the spinning beachball of death....While I wait to switch between timelines, I sit here trolling the interwebs for any new fixes or secret tips that may have floated through the ether of the.....Seriously though, the weird thing for me is that was a gradual and evolving problem. The more projects I ammased since late last fall (lets say post thanksgiving) the worse it got. I tried Marks tip of creating a new database with cleaned out projects. I tried switching database locations from a 16TB/8 drive raid to my internal boot drive. I tried ticking all the right boxes back and forth. I tried unintalling and reinstalling. Other than amasing more projects the only other variable change was updating twice. (Currently running 16.2.3.015). I am running a 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 2018 MBP on 10.14.6 with 16 gigs of ram and an eGPU running an AMD vega with 16megs Vram. (The 16gigs internal ram though low handled projects much bigger than what Im working on now....so I'm not buying the "its your ram...you need to upgrade to a pedabyte of ram to get Resolve to handle handsomely"...no I'm not taking the bait...I've tried resolve on my Dual CPU 5,1 (totally spec-ed out to a nerd's dream) and also on an older HP workstation with 128 ram and an Nvideo 2080ti..same issues. BTW I know I shouldnt be running a laptop but its a temp solution while I wait for a spec-ed 7,1. Just trying to get ahead of the lectures.

Marc's suggestion to enable the "Load all Timelines" preference didn't work for me (on macOS 10.14.6 with 96 GB of RAM), as far as switching between two large timelines (each 90 minutes long).

The delay between switching seems to be related to the length and/or number of clips in the timelines that you're switching between.

Switching from a 90 minute timeline with aproximately 800 clips, to a timeline with only 1 :15 second clip in it only takes 1 second to switch (although it really should still be faster than 1 second, as far as I'm concerned)

Switching from that same, single-shot :15 timeline back to the 90 minute timeline takes 4 seconds to switch, even with the "Load all Timelines" option enabled

TLDR: The slow timeline switching was being caused by a particular audio VST plugin: Izotope Ozone 9. Try disabling all your audio plugins. If that fixes helps then re-enable your audio plugins one-by-one until you see which ones are the culprits.

LONG VERSION: I've been dealing with this slow timeline switching (both in the timeline panel and when selecting different timelines in the media pool) issue for a long time. It can take between 10-20 seconds when going from one to another. And I have a pretty nice computer, specs below.

Disabling all of my audio VST plugins DID fix the issue. Then, by re-enabling the plugins one by one I narrowed the culprit down to the Izotope Ozone 9 VST plugin. I cannot confirm if any of the other plugins can cause issues issues, but I can tell you that I've noticed in Fairlight when I add Ozone 9 to a track it takes several seconds for that plugin to load, longer than any of my other plugins. When I start a new edit I typically use a default project with default empty timelines that have a transparaent instance Ozone 9 already inserted into the Master track (ready for me to dial in settings later), so you can imagine how this slow down issue has been haunting me for a while. Now I have removed it, but I do have Ozone re-enabled in my program but the timeline loading is only slow when I am using that effect on a particular timeline. So I'm just gonna find a good replacement for Ozone or I'll only put it in at the VERY end of my process.

P.S. Enabling "Load All Timelines" did not fix the issue, I had tried that first to effect.

PC Specs:
i9-9900k
Radeon VII
64GB Ram
Windows 10
Working files on external 24TB RAID 5 array

Thanks for this extremely helpful tip!

Disabling all VSTs didn't help in my case, neither did enabling the "Load all Timelines"-option. Has anyone found another solution to this issue since the last post?

My specs:
M2 Pro 14" Macbook
16gb RAM
Resolve 18.6

Marc you are running 128 currently? Weird, but when I check the preference of loading timelines as you suggested, it makes zero difference on the switching to my Master timeline. It still takes 22 seconds.

That sounds like an awfully long time to me. I start to get antsy and yell out rude things if I even have to wait even 10 seconds for a timeline to switch.

In the old days, there were very real limits as to how many clips and how much complexity we could have in a single timeline. I used to limit one timeline to no more than (say) 1000 clips and about 40 minutes of material, do I'd do either 2 or 3 or even 4 "virtual reels" for a 2-hour feature, just so that timeline switching and system response was more snappy.

But with Resolve 18 earlier this year, I started leaving the timelines as-is, and I've been OK with 1500, 1800, even 2000 shots in a single timeline. And some of these had fairly "heavy" node structures, with 36-40 nodes, noise reduction, OFX effects, group grade looks, film emulation, the whole deal. We're using a 2019 MacPro with 256GB of RAM and a Radeon Pro Vega II Duo GPU, plus (mostly) SSD RAIDs, and it's rare that I encounter a slowdown. When we do, an OFX plug-in (or multiple 4K streams) is generally the culprit, and we just cache that effect or transition.

Hello, I have also the timeline switch problem. For large timelines 60min+ with effects and other things, I have to wait more than a minute. It's painful, I've tried to disable plug-ins and other things and nothing worked. At home I'm on an old mac pro with 64 gb of ram and ati 580 rx 8gb card. Resolve 18.5 runs very well except for this switching timeline problem.